


Picture of You

by Sira



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 02:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sira/pseuds/Sira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura Roslin meets Wallace Gray on New Caprica.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picture of You

**Author's Note:**

> All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. 
> 
> I owe a thousand thanks to sczep84 and ufp13 for looking this ficlet over for me. You ladies rock! Thank you, mary_me11 for spotting a mistake! :)

They hadn’t talked in weeks, maybe months. In fact, she had no idea when she’d thought about him the last time. After the end of the worlds, no one had many friends left, but she had managed to lose the only one still connecting her to her past.

Wally and she had known each other for more than two decades, had lived through good and bad times. It had pierced her heart when he’d rejected her. Back then, her obligations had been more important than her hurt feelings, though. As president, one might not need to answer to anyone, but one didn’t have the freedom to choose one’s own life either. As president, her time, her devotion had belonged to the people; and when Laura Roslin had suffered, had wanted to crumple under the weight of her presidency, she had had to forget it, suck it up, move on. It had been a bitter lesson, but one she’d learned quickly. Madame President didn’t have any friends. And Laura Roslin, the woman, hadn’t only nearly died from cancer, she’d died the day she’d accepted the office of President.

Now, she wasn’t President any longer. Nowadays, she was Miss Roslin again – a teacher, New Caprica’s headmistress. Miss Roslin was loved by many kids, feared by some.

Still, sometimes when she was lying in her bed, she wondered how she could have lost herself so completely. Who was she? Who was Laura Roslin? And what did she want?

She missed Billy, his death a barely muted pain she carried around inside her, she missed Bill who made her wonder what could be. She missed Wally, too, although she only realised it when she found herself face to face with him at the market place.

“Sorry,” he said, wanted to step around her. She had barely a second left to decide. Did she want to let this chance slip through her fingers? Turning around on her heel, she touched his arm, watched surprise flicker over his face at her gesture.

“Yes?”

He wouldn’t make it easy for her. She understood.

“I wondered how you’ve been. I… would you like a cup of tea?”

He looked at her for a long moment, and she was nearly sure he’d decline, show her the cold shoulder once more. But then he shrugged, the barest of smiles flickering over his face. It was not a happy smile; it was a resigned one.

They had once known each other as well as two casual friends could know each other; they’d been lovers for a month. Only now, standing here in the drizzle of a grey afternoon, she realized she didn’t know this man. He had changed, but so had she.

“Tea sounds okay,” he said, and she knew it was all he’d give her for now.

“Good,” she said. Turning, she led the way toward her tent. He followed her, but they both remained silent. They didn’t have anything to say to each other, or maybe it was simply too much.

Once in her tent, he shrugged out of his coat, and she offered him a seat, one of the two she had. That she had as much as the two chairs which had found their place in the part of her tent used for cooking, eating and working was only thanks to Bill. One day, he’d stood in front of her tent, two of his marines carrying a table and two chairs. He hadn’t been able to stay, had been due for a meeting with Baltar, but the smile he’d given her had kept her warm through the night.

Laura prepared the tea, sad but not surprised to find that Wally didn’t seem to want to break the silence. Once the tea was finished, she poured, put one cup in front of him, sat down with the other.

“How have you been?”

“Busy. You?”

She sighed. “Listen, Wally. I know we didn’t part under the best of circumstances, and if you don’t want any contact with me any longer, I’ll accept that, but then be honest about it. Either go, and we’ll forget about it, or stay, and we can talk.”

He’d get up and leave. She could read the intention in his eyes as clearly as if he’d spoken out. Then he sighed, his hands curling around his cup of tea. His gaze met hers for all but a second then he looked away at some indistinctive point over her shoulder.

“I was angry with myself.”

“With yourself? Why?” She didn’t understand.

His gaze locked with hers once more. "It’s not your fault that I wanted to see someone you are not in you, Laura. I had a picture of you in my mind.”

Bruising, the way he looked at her was nearly bruising. It hurt to see the bitterness, the lost illusions in a man she’d always liked for his honesty, his quiet humour, his belief they could make a change. It seemed he hadn’t been the only one seeing things that weren’t there.

“A picture of me?” she prompted.

“Yes, a quiet woman, a woman with ethics, a gentle woman. I didn’t peg you for a shark.”

She shook her head, sad to her very core. “You have to be a shark if you want to survive dealing with them.”

“Obviously.”

“So you blame me for the decisions I made?”

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. It only saddens me that you lost yourself over a job.”

“Someone had to do the job.”

“Yes, that’s true But did you have to give up yourself, lose your integrity?” He didn’t sound angry, just defeated.

“You see it that way? Have you ever considered the choices I had? It’s so easy to place the blame if it hasn’t been you who had to make the decisions.”

“There are always options.”

“Yes, of course, there are. But sometimes, all that is left is to decide which option is the lesser evil. Gods, Wally, it was either Baltar or Zarek. Tom Zarek, the terrorist? You can’t tell me you’d have supported him.”

“You slept with Richard. Why? That was a choice, too, wasn’t it?”

She wouldn’t have been more surprised if he’d slapped her. Was this the root of all evil? The root of his frustration with her?

She took a deep breath.

“I can’t begin to understand where this comes from now, and I know this is none of your business, but yes, I did.”

“Why, Laura? Why him? Weren’t there other options?”

What about me? Wasn’t that the question he didn’t voice? Yes, he’d been there; yes, she’d known he wanted her, but she hadn’t been willing, hadn’t been able to commit to anyone. She wasn’t a nice woman, complicated and moody by nature. She’d worn him thin before too long. She remembered the day when she’d told him they couldn’t meet privately any longer, at least not be lovers. A kicked puppy – that was the image coming to mind.

“I never was the right woman for you, Wally.”

If he insisted on having this conversation, they would be honest about it.

For a moment, it looked as if he wouldn’t reply, would retreat into himself or get up and leave then his open gaze met hers.

“Sometimes, you think you’re too smart, Laura. This has always been one of your flaws.”

It was her turn to be surprised. She hadn’t expected that kind of reaction. As she valued honesty, she laughed out.

“I see you’re not afraid of keeping me on my toes. Care to elaborate?”

“I told you I had the wrong picture of you in my mind. That I put you up on a pedestal. Although I’m willing to admit that even when I knew better, I didn’t account for the depth of your cunning, I never thought you a saint. A saint wouldn’t have gone to bed with Richard. Still… you thought you could trick people during your affair with Richard. You took the presidency, smiling serenely, thinking it would delude people when you decreed things like a ban on abortions. But enough of that. What about you? What is the picture you have of me?”

“I don’t know.” How could she ever try to put her feelings into words? How not to hurt him in the process.

“Don’t worry, Laura. You won’t hurt me. Not this time.”

Yes, she had hurt him in the past. He was the only friend – had been the only friend – left from her time before the Cylon attacks. If she’d hurt him with not caring enough or with not caring in the way this friend had needed her to, who else had she hurt without meaning to?

“You are intelligent and gentle; a good and reliable friend.”

He snorted, took a large gulp of his tea. “In other words, you think I’m nothing short of a saint. I am boring.”

No, she didn’t think that, or did she? He wasn’t boring. Just… she had just never seen him as an interesting man, someone she’d want to date, spend time with in any intimate sense for a longer time. For her, he’d been missing an edge. Although looking at him now, she saw an edge. Was it new or had it always been there? She still saw Wally, but she saw more… Was this real? Or was she simply too lonely, imagining things that weren’t even there? Did she want to question herself?

“I don’t think you’re boring.”

He laughed out, three quarter bitterness, one quarter amusement.

“Revaluating old prejudices?”

It would have been easy to lie, but she didn’t want to. Laura Roslin, President, had had to lie on a constant basis. Laura Roslin, mistress of the former president, had lived a lie. Laura Roslin, school teacher, was tired of lying.

“Yes.” She made a point of holding his gaze when she spoke next. “To me, you’ve always been a friend, a good one. I didn’t think you were boring. Just… nice. Too nice.”

“Too nice for what?”

She sighed, took a sip of tea herself.

“One could see you were looking for more than I’d have been willing to give. We’re being completely honest with each other here, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. I always enjoyed the company of men, Wally. I enjoyed the company of Richard a great deal. I even felt for the men I was with. I felt for you. I felt for them with different degrees, but I cared. But what I wanted from them was to forget. I didn’t want to be coddled, didn’t want sweet talk. I wanted to forget and them to be gone afterwards.”

“To feel, to care is to allow pain?”

“Something like that, yes. I didn’t want to come home to a man and kids.”

“Who said I’d have wanted it.”

“Didn’t you?”

To his credit, he didn’t look away, didn’t even flinch. This wasn’t the man she thought she’d known any longer. He’d broken to pieces like everybody else, but the way his pieces fit together nowadays was a different one.

“Yes. I did.” An ironic smile had his lips curl upward for a moment. “With you. I wanted it with you.”

“I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be. I’ll never be.” She looked away, let her gaze skim the meagre belongings stored in her tent. What kind of life was this? Was that how she’d live for the rest of her life, or rather until the Cylons would find them? And what did she want from life? She had to think of Bill. But Bill was bound to Galactica, and she wouldn’t leave this planet. She couldn’t live a useless life, only be a man’s mistress although he’d give it another name. She looked at Wally again.

“It seems I’m not made for any kind of easy road, Wally. Even now, I’m looking for someone to battle wits with, for someone who attracts me the same way he infuriates me.”

“You’re looking for Bill Adama.”

He was her only friend, and it seemed the one who knew her best after all.

“Yes, I am.”

Wally drained his rest of his tea, got up from his seat before he took up his coat.

“I can’t ever compete with him.”

No, he couldn’t. For a momen,t she regretted it, the choices she made, her own inflexibility. But they all were what they were, couldn’t change each other, no matter how much she wished for it.

“But you can be my friend again,” Laura said, letting her hope he’d accept her offer of friendship seep into her voice.

“Could I?”

“I’d like that.”

He studied her for a long moment, finally nodded.

“I’ve got my hands on some meat. Come and meet me for dinner. Eight o’clock.”

He was gone before she could reply anything.

It was a beginning, wasn’t it? The wounds hadn’t healed – how could they? – but maybe, they had created a new foundation. Dinner at eight. The thought made her smile.

The End


End file.
